By Nury Vittachi

Wednesday, 16 January 2013

Maid cosplay at McDonalds

Only in Asia

STAFF AT MCDONALDS’ restaurants in Taiwan dressed up as French maids and addressed customers as “master”. I KNOW this is a cynical trick to lure fast-food-hating males like me to visit. How despicable! So, when are they doing it again? Just asking.

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A BUNGLING thief used a stolen credit card number to buy loads of cool stuff—but forgot to change the delivery address. All the luxury goods were sent to his victim. I love this story. Under current credit card policy, the victim, Chris Linford of Anchorage, Alaska, doesn’t have to pay the companies back: he gets to keep the lot.

Why has this never happened to me? Can someone kindly steal my credit card and order some basic household essentials for me, such as a yacht and a Ferrari Spider?

If you are a law enforcement agent, please forget you read this. Thank you. ***

YOUNG WOMEN will be “issued overcoats” to stop them driving innocent men mad with lust, Indian regional education minister T. Thiagarajan (above) said last week.

I’m tempted to joke that he could lower the number of sexual offences further by exiling all females to the moon, but he’d take it seriously.

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AN ELEVATOR in a Malaysian hotel has a sign in it saying that can only transport foods which are “halal” (a term which usually refers to animals ritually slaughtered by having their throats cut), I hear from Amy Chew, a reader in Kuala Lumpur. Non-halal items must go via the staircase.

The sign threateningly adds: “This elevator is under CCTV surveillance” just in case a packet of non-halal chicken legs tries to tiptoe into the lift when no-one’s looking. The rule must be annoying if you are carrying heavy items.

Mind, you, I cut my neck while shaving this morning, so my whole body might be halal just now.

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LIVE IN CHINA? Are you a peasant who can’t afford Apple products? Now you can just pay a small fee via the popular Taobao website and they will add “sent from my iPhone” to any texts you send, whether you are using your ancient Nokia, or by dictation using a cup and string or whatever. I miss morality. ***

CANDIDATE FOR Dumb Criminal of the month is Terry Davis, 25, of the US state of Kentucky. Police said he stole a textbook called Resolving Ethical Issues from one book store and tried to sell it to another. I’m guessing he didn’t read it. I MISS MORALITY. ***

MY AUSTRALIAN friends are being oven-baked by a heat wave which lifted the temperature to one million degrees. At the same time, a reader in China sent a note saying that extreme cold up there has caused 1,000 ships to be frozen into the ice. Can someone not construct a pipe that sends countries bits of each others’ weathers? I can’t believe scientists can give Bruno Mars a 15cm quiff but they can’t do this.

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THE KILOGRAM is getting heavier every year as dust settles on the original weight, which is kept in a building in Paris, scientists said last week. Hah! I KNEW I wasn’t as fat as my weighing machine said.

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CURIOUS TO see how the Internet is evolving. Many people seem to have abandoned the web for Facebook. The Mr Jam posts, for example, now get way more comments on Facebook than on standalone websites, such as the media sites of the newspapers and magazines which print this column.

But the commentators on THIS site, the home site, are still my favorite. For some reason, this is the only site I know which gets almost zero abusive or dumb comments. You guys rock!

I think it’s because many Facebook addicts don’t really do anything except Facebook. So there’s nothing fun or interesting in their lives for them to write about.

And even the little bit of creative stuff they do there isn’t original—they just swap comments and links they’ve seen elsewhere.

Where has all the creativity gone? Maybe it disappeared with all the morality….